The Mysterious Island
By Jules Verne.
Translated by Stephen W. White.
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Redactor’s Note
The Mysterious Island (Number V013 in the T & M numerical listing of Verne’s works) is a translation of L’Île mystérieuse first published in England by Sampson and Low and in the United States by Scribner and Henry L. Shepard using the same translation of W. H. G. Kingston. English translators often altered their translations to suit current political views of Church and Empire. In the Kingston translation the chapters near the end of the book where Captain Nemo makes his appearance are altered beyond all recognition and all mention of Captain Nemo’s previous life as a “freedom fighter” for Indian independence is removed, in addition to other deletions. The present translation is by the American Stephen W. White. It first appeared in the Evening Telegraph of Philadelphia, PA and was later published as an Evening Telegraph Reprint Book (1876). The present version is prepared from a xerox copy of that book kindly provided by Mr. Sidney Kravitz of Dover, NJ. According to Taves and Michaluk, “Although more faithful than any other translation, this one has never been reprinted.” And so after a lapse of 127 years this translation of The Mysterious Island is now again available to the public.
Since the text was hand set for a newspaper there are many printer’s errors (including upside-down characters). Where obvious these have been corrected, although an attempt has been made to retain the original spelling of words in use at that period. Where there is a doubt, words have been altered so that the spelling is consistent. In other cases, like “trajopan” where the inconsistency is traced to Verne’s original, the spelling is left unaltered. A table of contents based on the chapter headings has been added which also indicates the points at which the French version was divided into three parts. An updated translation by Sidney Kravitz is now available from Wesleyan University Press (2001).
Norman M. Wolcott, 2003
Editor’s note: The original version of this foreword contained a request from Mr. Wolcott, now deceased, to forward corrections to his email address. In lieu of this, please forward corrections to both Project Gutenberg (the original source of this transcription), and to the Standard Ebooks project (the editors of this free corrected ebook edition). Instructions on how to forward corrections to Standard Ebooks are in the colophon at the end of this ebook.
The Mysterious Island
Part I
Shipwrecked in the Air
I
The hurricane of 1865—Cries in the air—A balloon caught by a waterspout—Only the sea in sight—Five passengers—What took place in the basket—Land ahead—The end.
“Are we going up again?”
“No. On the contrary; we are going down!”
“Worse than that, Mr. Smith, we are falling!”
“For God’s sake throw over all the ballast!”
“The last sack is empty!”
“And the balloon rises again?”
“No!”
“I hear the splashing waves!”
“The sea is under us!”
“It is not five hundred feet off!”
Then a strong, clear voice shouted:—
“Overboard with all we have, and God help us!”
Such were the words which rang through the air above the vast wilderness of the Pacific, towards four o’clock in the afternoon of the 23rd of March, 1865:—
Doubtless, no one has forgotten that terrible northeast gale which vented its fury during the equinox of that year. It was a hurricane lasting without intermission from the 18th to the 26th of March. Covering a space of 1,800 miles, drawn obliquely to the equator, between the 35° of north latitude and 40° south, it occasioned immense destruction both in America and Europe and Asia. Cities in ruins, forests uprooted, shores devastated by the mountains of water hurled upon them, hundreds of shipwrecks, large tracts of territory desolated by the waterspouts which destroyed everything in their path, thousands of persons crushed to the earth or engulfed in the sea; such were the witnesses to its fury left behind by this terrible hurricane. It surpassed in disaster those storms
